First, Luke 1 talks about the promise of Jesus birth to Mary and the background and birth of John the baptist. Thus it does not adress wether God is able to do two mutually exclusive things at the same time or not.
Secoundly, it is possible that God knows everything that will happen between now and eternity and that He has always done so. What I am saying is that if this is true, then the doctrine of free will of man joins with the doctrine of mans eternal soul and the doctrine of hell and the doctrine of the Pope being Jesus auctorised representative on earth and the doctrine of Abraham and Lazarus sitting in heaving looking down at a rich man and his brothers burn in hell.The question is not if Christ or Peter was right. The question is if Peter after hearing this could have choosen to stay away from any opportunity to deny Jesus or if Peter had no choise but to deny Jesus as soon as Jesus had prophesied it.

In a hypotetical situation. Tonight while you sleap, Jesus in a dream tells you that before the week is over, you will have left your wife for a younger woman and moved to Tahiti. If this happen, what do you do? Do you take it as a warning and to the outmost of your ability stay away from younger women for the rest of the week, or do you start a quest to find the most likeable young woman to run away with since Jesus now prophesied that you would do so?And as soon as Jesus had said the last sylable, Peter was forced to deny Him that very night?

No. Peter wasn't forced to do anything that very night, and neither was Judas. Both freely chose to do what they did.

You and Tom both forget that Christ knew beforehand what they would choose to do. He didn't make it happen. He only knew beforehand what freewill choice each would make, just as He knows what choices we will make even before we know ourselves.

Why do you limit God in this area?

I can see you limiting God in the senseless example that was posted earlier, but there isn't anything senseless about limiting God in this area.

God never claimed that He could make a rock so heavy that He couldn't lift it, however, Christ in the already provided text did claim that He could know beforehand what a person would choose to do.

It is in this sense that God said that nothing is impossible for Him to do.

We're not forgetting this. This isn't the relevant fact. The relevant facts are the following:

a)If God's knowing that A will happen means that A will happen and not B, then it's not possible for B to happen.
b)If a person has free will mean he can do either A or B, then we have a contradiction.

Either it's true that only A can happen, or it's true that A or B can happen. Both cannot be the case.

Now I've asked you if the fact that God has seen that A will happen means that A must happen, and you've answered yes, which is a) above, meaning that A must happen, not B.

I've also asked if free will means that a person can do B and not A, and you've said yes.

Well, this is a contradiction! On the one hand, the person can't do B because B can't happen, because A must happen, because God has foreseen that this is what will happen. On the other hand, the person supposedly can to B because he has free will.

Well either he can do B (because he has free will), or he can't (because God has seen that he won't), but not both!

Which is it? Can the person do B or not?

I should add that many bring up the fact that God's foreseeing what will happen does not force a person to do what God has foreseen. This is of course true from the sense of physical force. God is not forcing a person to do what he has seen (and force isn't a principle of God's government anyway).

The "forcing" that takes place is of the logical variety. If God has foreseen that A will occur and not B, the person is "forced" to do A not because of anything God does, but by the logic of the situation. If it is the case that A must happen, then obviously the person cannot do B. That's just logic. It's not dependent upon anything that God is doing.

So what you should be asserting is not that God's foreseeing the future does not force a person to do what God has seen, but that logic does not force this to happen. But logic *does* "force" this to happen.

Daryl,

As for myself (and I guess Tom aswell), I have not forgotten about knowing beforehand. You and Mike keep minding about that.
If Peter wasn't forced to do anything that very night, the there was a posibility that he could have gone home instead of going to the high priests house and thereby could have avoided denying Jesus? Yes or no?

As for the rock example. I agree that it is totally senseless. And my point in giving it was to show that I think the idea of Gods absolute foreknowledge and mans absolute free will both being true at the same time is exactly as senseless as is the idea that God could or would create such a rock.

What I believe is that in creating intelligent beings such as ourselves, and giving us a free choise, God by this act surrendered some of His absolute power by His own choise.
I believe that God created humans because He wanted to have communion with Him. He wants us to love Him. Now, it is impossible to force love. Many things can be forced but love cannot be forced. It can only be given. So for God to recieve something from His created beings that must be given by free will, God surrendered controll over humans in the sence that we can choose for ourselves what we will do. (Though humans have been known to try and force our will over other humans, and at other times to surrender our will to someone else.) Now, if Jesus by telling Peter that he would deny Him, and thus leaving Peter without the choise not to deny Jesus. Then Peter no longer had the free choise to do what He wanted.

Is this making any sence at all? I do not think you are at all understanding what I am writing. Am I wasting my time here? Maybe we should just agree to disagree and be done with that. This effort appears to have to many things in common with Sisyfos struggle for comfort.

Carry on y'all.

You're making sense to me! I have a friend, who sees things similarly to I do, who thinks that we have a different gene than others who don't see the problem. It is, to us, a very obvious one, but apparently there are others who have trouble seeing it. It's very frustrating. Anyway, I appreciate your chiming in. I've tried to present things as clearly as possible, with the A and B bit, and am curious to see how that goes, if the point is understood.

When I've had this discussion in the past, the response that keeps coming back is "The fact that God knows what we will do does not interfere with our free will," but actual dealing with the logical problems involved.

Your point about love and free will and surrendering a bit of His sovereignty (my choice of words here, but the idea you shared) is right on! God has given us power to will and to do, so that His will is not always done (in fact, is seldom done), which is why we are enjoined to pray, "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Hope you keep posting!

TE: Assuming God knows what choice we will make doesn't explain how we can make a choice He has seen we won't make.

MM: You make it sound like God’s foreknowledge is the reason why we won’t or can’t choose differently than He has foreseen, as if His foreknowledge somehow prevents us from choosing another way. This makes no sense to me whatsoever.

God’s foreknowledge is based on His divine ability to see the end from the beginning. God is simply reporting the facts. Foreknowledge and hindsight are, in God’s case, one and the same thing. From God’s divine perspective there is no difference between history and the future.

The future, for God, is like watching a rerun. His divine ability to see the future like history in no way affects the choices we have made or will make. To insist that God’s divine ability to see the future like history means we cannot choose differently than He has foreseen is ludicrous. It ignores the fact God views the future as if it were a rerun.

No one would accuse someone who is watching a rerun of preventing the actor from choosing another way simply because they report what will happen before it happens. Nobody accuses historians of preventing the people they write about from making different choices. They are simply reporting what has already happened.

Explaining what a person will do, before they do it, based on divine foreknowledge or hindsight, has nothing to do with whether or not that person can't or won't do something else. It has nothing to do with it. God is simply reporting what, from His divine perspective, has already happened - before it happens. He is God, therefore, He can report the future like it was history.

That is the question, if what you here claim to be fact indeed is a fact. I say no. You say yes. And this means we do not have enough common ground to have this discussion.

TE: Assuming God knows what choice we will make doesn't explain how we can make a choice He has seen we won't make.

MM: You make it sound like God’s foreknowledge is the reason why we won’t or can’t choose differently than He has foreseen, as if His foreknowledge somehow prevents us from choosing another way. This makes no sense to me whatsoever.

I've never done this, even once! I've denied this countless times, very likely, hundreds of times I've explained to you that the problem has nothing to do with God's foreknowledge, but rather with the nature of the future, as to whether it's fixed or not. The logical contradictions exist without God's foreknowledge being discussed at all.

I've explained this many times, but you keep coming back to this point. I don't know why.

The contradiction lies in the fact that, on the one hand, you assert something which implies that only one thing can happen in the future, and on the other hand something else which implies that more than one thing can happen in the future. Which is it? Is the future comprised or possibilities or is it an actuality which we simply can't see? It can't be both.

It depends upon whether or not the person can actually do something else. For example, I know my wife well enough to know that if I say something in certain circumstance she will respond in a certain way. But can she actually do something different? Yes she can.

However, if our future history is recorded in a book, can we do something different than what's recorded? No.

I asked you earlier if the fact that God has seen us doing A in the future means that A will happen, and you responded "yes." Now if A must happen, then I can't do anything other than A. God's foreknowledge doesn't force me to do A, however. What "forces" me to do A ("force" is really the wrong word, but it's the word you have been using, so I'll go along with it) is that fact that I can't do anything other than A.

Again, God's foreknowledge isn't the problem. The problem is that only A can happen and not B.

God's foreknowledge doesn't force us to do anything. Everyone knows this. Please don't keep making this point. No one is saying otherwise.